MEXICAN AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES TO MEET WITH THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, SPEAK AT COLORADO SPRINGS FUNCTION

MEXICAN AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES TO MEET WITH THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, SPEAK AT COLORADO SPRINGS FUNCTION

DENVER— Colorado Attorney General John Suthers announced today that he will meet with Arturo Sarukhán, the Mexican ambassador to the United States, during the ambassador’s visit to Colorado on Wednesday, March 14. Sarukhán also is scheduled to appear as the featured speaker at The Winter Night Club event that evening at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. He will speak on Mexico and United States relations.

“It is a great honor for me to welcome Ambassador Sarukhán to Colorado and to my hometown of Colorado Springs,” Suthers said. “His presence underlines the commitment of my office and law enforcement throughout our state to work with our Mexican peers to seek justice and improve public safety.”

Sarukhán will address The Winter Night Club at 7:30 p.m. Journalists are invited to attend the speech at the Broadmoor International Center, located at 1 Lake Ave. in Colorado Springs.

Sarukhán served as deputy assistant secretary for inter-American affairs and was posted in 1993 to the Mexican Embassy in the United States where he first served as chief of staff to the ambassador. In 2000 he became chief of policy planning at the Mexican Foreign Ministry and was appointed as Mexican consul general to New York City in 2003. He resigned from this post and took a leave of absence from the Foreign Service in 2006 to join the presidential campaign of Felipe Calderón as foreign policy adviser and international spokesman. He served as coordinator for foreign affairs on Calderón’s transition team. In November 2006 he received the rank of ambassador and in February 2007 was appointed ambassador to the United States.

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office has had a long and fruitful relationship with the government of Mexico. The Office of the Attorney General regularly works with the Procuraduría General de la República and other Mexican law enforcement under Article IV of the Mexican Penal Code to prosecute Mexican nationals who commit crimes in Colorado and flee to Mexico. The Office of the Attorney General has successfully prosecuted seven Article IV cases and received a total of more than 110 years in prison for those seven defendants. The Attorney General’s Office has five other defendants in custody in Mexico awaiting verdicts.

The Office of the Attorney General also has worked through the Conference of Western Attorneys General and its partners in the National Association of Attorneys General to assist Mexican law enforcement agencies in their country’s transition to an adversarial trial system. The Colorado Attorney General’s Office and its Foreign Prosecutions Unit have been at the forefront of helping the Mexican states implement these changes to the Mexican Code of Criminal Procedure.

The Winter Night Club is a Colorado Springs-based social club that meets for dinner and to hear guest speakers address matters of state and national significance five nights each year between October and March. The organization was founded in 1902 and its original membership included William Palmer, the founder of Colorado Springs, and Spencer Penrose, the founder of the Broadmoor and the El Pomar Foundation. The Broadmoor Hotel has been the site of Winter Night Club meetings since the 1950s.